Monday, January 16, 2006

New reference work in the Grey Library

My apologies for the lack of posting recently. I was given Roger's Profanisaurus Rex for Christmas (by karen, who really ought to know better!) and it has taken me a while to work my way through the 8000+ entries. It is described as "the ultimate swearing dictionary" and could also be described as a "bag of shite"...

For those not in the gag, Roger Mellie is a larger than life TV presenter character based on a real life North Eastern anchorman who swore like a trooper whenever the red light went off. The Profanisauris is a collection of swear words, euthanisms and witty onomatopoeias generally revolving around things humans do in private or maybe down the rugby club.

It is a feaux style of a professional work, the parody of the name being from Rogets Thesaurus. It isn't actually a thesaurus, but it does contain a number of synonyms in many of the entries.

I had always assumed that Roger Mellie was based onMike Neville who was on the BBC in my youth, although he had more of a talent for falling off bar stools than swearing from my personal memories of him at the Newcastle Festival late night bar in the Centre Hotel. Anyway, my recent reading of Chris Donald's Autobiography "Rude Kids" confirmed that I was totally wrong, it was the guy on the other side called Rod Griffith who I don't remember at all.

The book is a bit of a let-down in consistency- sometimes it references other non-existent entries so the meaning remains a mystery 9although it is probably yet another word to describe the Perineum, (otherwise known as the Barse or Biffin Bridge), there are numerous entries for that.

Anyway, you can give it a try yourself, at Viz online.

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